Y'all Gonna Be Here When I Wake Up?

While negotiating my monthly deluge of digital magazines around the cusp of the month, I often save the quarterly Smith Journal to read when I've got time to savor it at leisure. One of those literate compendia of oddities to which I'm mildly addicted (like Cabinet), it comes less frequently than the monthlies--and even less so than The New Yorker, which I now get weekly--and thus requires slow perusal.

I quickly noticed (perhaps because I'm lately attuned to such things) the abundance of articles about dead stuff in this issue. There's so much of it, that a disclaimer of sorts appears on the editorial page:

You could chalk it up to living through these 'uncertain times'--the political turmoil, the 24-hour news cycle, the unseasonable weather harbinging certain environmental collapse. But flicking through the ink-smudged proofs as we corral this thing into something approximating a magazine, I don't think that's quite it. Death, as the platitudes tell us, is an integral part of life; the other side of a coin tossed in the air. Coming to some kind of terms with the fact that we're all headed for the grave seems like a good use of our time on this side of the soil.

Indeed. Just last week I was awaiting my latest flirtation with (I hoped) temporary oblivion (general anesthesia), the single scariest event I've faced since the last time I was under the knife nine years ago. This time it was to correct an artefact of the last one, experienced about a year later when I tripped on a garden hose and landed flat on my torso, tearing a small hole in the incision from the valve job. Said tear gradually grew larger over the ensuing years until my GP's PA, my cardio guy, and my swell new surgeon all decided it was time to repair it. So last Wednesday I underwent robotic surgery to do a bit of boro work on my gut.

The Robot's name was Da Vinci. My surgeon, unlike my art history students, was until recently unaware that Leonardo was the artist's use-name. Da Vinci really means "bastard son of a guy from Vinci," which I never tire of telling anyone who will listen, including my rather affable young anaesthesiologist. (When she came in to meet me, I blurted out, "A chick anaesthesiologist! How very cool!")

In the run-up to the surgery, which required a CT scan (of which I now own a CD copy of the images--although not as nicely colored as the illustration above), I had plenty of time for musing about the eventual outcome. My main concern was that I am totally unprepared, from both a legal perspective (no will, no advance directive) and in the sense of what the Swedes call "death cleaning." A few months ago I bought the Kindle version of Margareta Magnusson's The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter, in hopes that it would give me some strategies for getting things sorted out now that we've got time for sorting. I don't really want to de-clutter so much as to catalogue, since one woman's clutter is another's Owls Head. But I do want to get a handle on the collections (inspired by the likes of Joseph Cornell, Rosamond Purcell, and Sibella Court), although I'm not sure if I'll get around to doing anything with them except arranging small, artfully-contrived museum exhibits around the house.

Small tremors of terror began to well up into my psyche to the tune of "what if I die under the robotic knife and I leave all this shit for Esther and Ethan and Rod to clean up?"

Instead of actually doing anything about it, though, I took the time to chill out, sit back, and update my Pinterest boards--which are a visual version of my garage (only much tidier and much, much prettier).

In the end, however, I did not die (at least I haven't yet). I did repeat the question I stole from Mal Reynolds in the "Out of Gas" episode of Firefly, to the amusement of no one but by daughter and my husband, and which provides the title for this post. Back in 2009, as I was being wheeled in for valve replacement surgery, I said the very same thing to them, although more spontaneously. Only that time, the nurse who was taking care of me was a Firefly fan and knew the dialogue every bit as well as we did. The last thing I remember as I lost consciousness was the bed's shaking with her laughter as she guided me down the hallway.

My jokes are all old and well worn, even if they have found fresh audiences. I shouldn't have to dig them up again. Documentation and cataloguing of the archives is still to be done, however, and now I won't be able to put it off once the healing is finished. That may take a bit, because although my plumbing seems to be working again, I'm sore and tired and every now and then feel like somebody's going at me with a hot poker. I've got to wear an abdominal binder for a few weeks, and I won't be able to do the full range of Qigong practices I'd followed faithfully during the last three months for at least another three.

The good news is that by week 4 (according to a vast cache of online literature about healing from ventral hernia repair) I should be able to play tennis.

Which will make my Beloved Spouse happy indeed, since I never could before.

Ba-dump-bum.

Image credit: The arterial figure, shown frontally with the internal organs indicated in opaque watercolours. An undated and unsigned copy, probably 15th or early 16th-century. Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (MS P 19) (The Anatomy of the Human Body)
تشريح بدن انسان by Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās (fl. ca. 1390). MS P 19, fol. 18a. Image at NLM. Available through a Creative Commons license at the Brooklyn College Library.

Note: This is another bit of an art history joke. I used to amuse my students with illuminated manuscripts featuring odd drawings and drolleries of all types. Some of my favorite were from a genre I called "anatomical squats," used to illustrate innumerable ailments in Medieval Arabic medical MSS.

Homer The Brave

Dogs are such a part of the good life for human beings that I can't imagine not having them around for any length of time. When we lose one we lose family--and some family are harder to lose than others.

Such is the case with Homer, my daughter's version of "Marley," who for a couple of years made us crazy, but then, when he finally felt safe and "at home" became the happiest, goofiest dog I've ever known.

Well, Homer died yesterday, after a long illness. Rather than telling the story myself, I'll let her do it. This is the letter she wrote to the adoption agency after he died:

I just wanted to inform you that Homer, who I adopted 5 years and 8 months ago, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 9-ish.

He had been diagnosed with Leiomysarcoma (cancer of the smooth muscle tissue) in November of last year. He had surgery in December to remove the tumor, however it was too intricately entwined with his ureter and too close to his spine for them to be able to remove it. We went home with Homer on "pallative care", with the vets only expecting him to live a short time. My sweet boy held on for almost 9 months. 8 months and 30 days to be exact... He was a fighter and loved his life so much he didn't want to let go. My vets were all amazed by his attitude and his determination to keep on keeping on.

Sunday night he could hardly walk, and by Monday morning he showed me in his own special way that it was time. He was tired of fighting, and he was ready to let go. Two of his favorite aunties and my boyfriend came over to say goodbye, and we all loved on him for a long time before we took him in. His passing was a true testament to his life - he was pure love down to his last breath. He was surrounded by love, and even my vet cried. He actually had to leave the room afterwards because it was too much for him. For a dog to have that much of an impact on a vet speaks volumes about Homer's personality and gentle soul.

I just wanted to say thank you for saving him, and thank you for keeping him until he picked me as his mom. I loved him so much, and he changed my life.

He was the best dog in the world, and when I am ready for another dog, Lexee's is the first place I will look.

It's fitting, I think, that Homer is still the "poster dog" on the Lexee's Legacy home page.

We'll all miss him, but I can't tell you all how proud I am of my kid, who took on a task that many had already refused. But the only thing she refused was to give up, and Homer gave us many happy years as a result.

Image notes: These are the last two pictures Esther sent me of Homer; the opening shot was taken the night before he died. For things like this I'll be eternally grateful that we've now both got iPhones.

Be Here Now

Most of my musings over the last few weeks have taken place among friends and colleagues, all of whom are noticing the rapid passage of time and tide. I was beginning to think that I was alone in lamenting the loss of what now seem like copious amounts of free time--moments that used to allow me to post more than once (on more than one blog) per month, and when I used to be able to sit in the garden and simply enjoy a few minutes of pleasant lethargy, watching butterflies alight on blossoms, raptors gliding aloft, squirrels pilfering seed from the bird feeders, and "puppies" lounging in the shade after a hard romp--without feeling guilty about not doing something more "productive." But others report feeling the same way, as if we've lost something important.

One reason I'm not posting much these days is that I don't have anything particularly helpful to add to political discussions going on in Washington and/or in Austin. Mostly they're not really discussions at all--more like bickering and spouting. I'm quite simply tired of it all, and thoroughly disgusted that people of all flavors seem to have lost any notion of common sense, common purpose, or common good. I'm too dispirited to rant; I lack the energy necessary to compile cogent arguments in favor of anything. I simply delete pleas that appear in my mailbox to contribute to any conversations, even those from groups like No Labels that are actually trying to do something to ameliorate the situation.

I've turned my efforts toward the tiny things I can actually do, like put together more interesting discussion topics for students in hopes that at some point in their lives they will become concerned about some of the big questions I've been pondering most of my life. I've actually put in a garden this year, too, with some vegetables (eggplant, beans, squash) in addition to the usual tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. I expanded the portion of the back quarter acre devoted to food crops, with plans for further expansion for fall plantings in the now-trimmed Carbon Sink. The former "accidental garden" has been shorn of some of its volunteers, and the wood will be harvested for projects and mulch.

As the puppies age (they're now seven, officially "senior" according to our vets), they're beginning to slow down, too. Woody now has arthritis in his hips, which recently required doses of NSAIDs and the addition of very expensive supplements for the rest of his life. So far Arlo is doing fine, but because he's long and low, we anticipate back problems for him in future. The three of us get out into the garden to "work" more--I with the planting and digging, they with the squirrel-chasing and protecting me from dangerous babies strolling by--if I don't write. What free time I actually find seems now to be spent out of doors, except when I'm driven in by loud music or noisy lawn equipment.

I guess this is really what's going on: a change in priorities. Whereas during the last four years of messing about in the blogosphere and thinking on digital paper I've had the chance to locate my philosophical core (sustainable economies), I appear lately to have reached a plateau. I don't seem to need to get it all written down, although I still appreciate having recorded some of what's been going on and being able to go back and see where I've been. As life winds down, though, and memory gets less and less reliable, priorities seem to be shifting to the immediate: what's happening this week, today, now.

The irony involved here is that for years I've practically berated my students for not thinking past the moment, for not planning ahead, for not investing in the future. They're so totally involved in the local, personal, and immediate, that they develop only vague notions of what all their hard work is leading toward. Instead, the songs playing on the iPod, the phone call or text message interrupting my class, the inevitable call to the restroom after consumption of an energy drink--all these take precedence over everything else.

Perhaps the common ground between the old and the young lies here: in the realization that the moment really does count. That we can't spend all of our time planning for the future or yearning for the past.

My sweet, gruff, funny brother-in-law, who spent several years waiting for a heart transplant, died this last weekend, only a couple of years after he'd received his new heart. He was only sixty-six, but in the last fifteen years he seems to have packed in more living than most of us achieve in much longer lifetimes. I don't think he spent much time planning very far beyond the next day or two, and over the years I've watched him savor life with abject appreciation for what time he'd been given.

I think, in the end, I'd rather spend my time in the garden, savoring days like this one, clear and scrubbed clean by last night's storms, than keep fussing over things I can't do a rutting thing about. Thanks for the lesson, Dennis. We will all miss you.

Image notes: this is a photo I took with the "wet" Nikon during one of our last trips to California by car, in 1999. On our way back from Porterville, we took the Death Valley Road out of Big Pine and headed back east. While remembering Dennis this week, I thought about this trip because he had lived with my sister-in-law (who has managed several refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) near Porterville, and they had met in Pahrump, Nevada, not far from Death Valley. It seemed like a fitting shot, both for the topic, and for Skywatch Friday.